u.s. 29http://www.readthehook.com/taxonomy/term/1042/all
enDMZhttp://www.readthehook.com/108874/dmz
<p>Walking in the County southeast on Hydraulic Road past the shops at Stonefield. Enjoying the new sidewalk and trees. Headed home. Arriving at the “Main Street” of the County, U.S. Route 29, the neighborhood model takes on a new light. Not sure exactly how many lanes there are, as they are a challenge to count when standing on one side. How is the pedestrian meant to cross into Charlottesville? Carefully. [<em>For our post-Korean Conflict readers, "DMZ" typically stands for de-militarized zone.&#8211;editor</em>]<br />~<br /><em>Commentator Bill Emory puts up a new photo nearly every day at </em><a href="http://billemory.com/blog/2010/04/01/liriodendron-tulipifera/"><em></em></a><em><a href="http://billemory.com/blog/">billemory.com/blog</a>.</em></p>
http://www.readthehook.com/108874/dmz#comments_BreakingNewsFeaturedHydraulic Roadneighborhood modelu.s. 29Black and WhiteMon, 10 Dec 2012 17:44:41 +0000Bill Emory108874 at http://www.readthehook.comSeminole trailhttp://www.readthehook.com/103120/seminole-trail
<p>I received a request from China for pictures of Charlottesville, so I biked north via the John Warner Parkway to our “Main Street,” the curiously named Seminole Trail. (Why is it named that? <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&amp;contentId=A56265-2004Feb19&amp;notFound=true">No one seems to know</a>, but most likely a trick&#8211; <em>Mad Men</em> work, advertising to attract the gullible.) It is a remarkable area, this Seminole Trail, a land of many lakes and places to shop. In the course of my three-mile ride along U.S. 29, from Arden Place to Barracks Road, I saw one pedestrian.<br /> ~<br /> <em>Commentator Bill Emory puts up a new photo nearly every day at <a href="http://billemory.com/blog/">billemory.com/blog</a>.</em></p>
http://www.readthehook.com/103120/seminole-trail#comments_BreakingNewsFeaturedCommunitypedestrianismu.s. 29Black and WhiteMon, 02 Apr 2012 15:42:43 +0000Bill Emory103120 at http://www.readthehook.comGreen light: Why not sync every signal before Bypassing?http://www.readthehook.com/100856/synchronization-could-man-do-what-200mm-bypass-would-do
<p>Can you imagine zipping up U.S. 29 north through green lights and reaching the airport in a matter of minutes, so efficiently that, wait, we don't need this new $436 million, forest-cutting, mountain-moving road that just been revealed to cost double earlier estimates?</p>
<p>Okay, maybe that's not in the wildest imagination of planners.</p>
<p>What is imaginable is that the 14 traffic lights that the Western 29 Bypass will avoid could be synchronized for just $42,000, according to UVA transportation engineer Byungkyu "Brian" Park. A man whose ideas and computer models have won him acclaim in national transportation journals, Park remains practically unknown in Charlottesville.</p>
<p>Yet, in a place that may soon hold the dubious distinction of building a bypass that doesn't actually bypass some of its key bottlenecks, shouldn't Charlottesville and Albemarle synchronize all their lights before embarking on a six-mile, VDOT-estimated&nbsp; $400-plus-million project, a project so controversial that it's been stalled for 20 years, and whose most ardent supporters concede won't solve the congestion on U.S. 29 north?</p>
<p>"Typically, cities and state DOTs don't have enough money to do the timing," Park says helpfully. "They've got to do the potholes, too."</p>
<p>Park pegs the synchronization cost at just $3,000 per intersection, and that estimate includes going out to collect traffic counts at peak hours and setting up models.</p>
<p>"It's not like you're building a bridge," says Park. "You just change the settings. It's fairly cheap."</p>
<p>Park's computer models suggest that every traffic light in the United States, all 340,000 of them, could be synchronized to keep traffic moving, saving fuel and travel times. At a coast-to-coast cost of $1.02 billion, and with improved travel times ranging from 10 to 30 percent, the question arises, why aren't all the traffic lights in this country synchronized?</p>
<p>"That's a good question," Park says.</p>
<p>This area has seen some signal synchronization. One longtime resident remembers special signals&#8211; removed in the 1990s&#8211; along West Main Street telling motorists what speed to drive for optimal red-light avoidance.</p>
<p>West Main was re-timed in late 2005. Yet $200,000 worth of software still required a technician to manually reset the lights each day for a year and another $180K in additional software, former city councilor Kevin Lynch recalls.</p>
<p>"One of my concerns was the amount of money thrown out," says Lynch. "It's not rocket science to synchronize lights."</p>
<p>Park echoes the sentiment. And it turns out Charlottesville officials are once again trying to sync West Main lights, and this time it should be a lot cheaper.</p>
<p>"We already have the hardware," says city traffic engineer Jeanie Alexander, "and we've been collecting data this week."</p>
<p>The new West Main project stretches from Ridge Street to 14th Street, and also includes intersections on nearby Roosevelt Brown, Cherry Avenue, and Crispell Drive, "so we don't cause problems there," says Alexander, who puts the cost for 12 intersections at about $25,000.</p>
<p>Emmet Street/U.S. 29 was supposedly synchronized in 2009. On the city's portion of that busy corridor, travel time was reduced 15 percent during peak morning hours and 12 percent during peak afternoon commutes, Alexander says.</p>
<p>U.S. 29 from Hydraulic to Airport Road was resynchronized in 2008-2009 for a travel time savings of about a minute, according to VDOT regional operations manager Dean Gustafson.&nbsp;</p>
<p>"We've had nothing but positive comments about that," he says.</p>
<p>Some recent 29 travelers, after sitting through three or four traffic lights on a trip up to Target, might beg to differ. Over time, with new businesses, shopping centers, and subdivisions popping up, efficient traffic flow is degraded, says Park. And then there are people's perceptions.</p>
<p>"Their view is that they're going to drive up the road, and every light will be green," says Steve Williams, Thomas Jefferson Planning District executive director. "But you're still sitting at lights. The funny thing is, you can get pretty good improvement, but people don't perceive it."</p>
<p>As it turns out, unless you're in a downtown situation with one-way streets and short blocks, a string of greens may be the holy grail&#8211; but equally unattainable.</p>
<p>For the rest of the world, when lights are timed, there are measurable improvements, along with reduced fuel use and pollution, says Williams, but on a busy corridor like 29, green-after-green, he says, is "not going to happen."</p>
<p>We just happened to be taking a phone call from Wendell Wood on Monday, September 19, when the developer of Hollymead Town Center stayed on the line, encountering nothing but greens as he drove from Ivy Road to a point past Wal-Mart without hitting a single red light&#8211; something he says he can't predict even though he paid for four of the intersections along the way.</p>
<p>"It works when it works," says Wood.</p>
<p>The number of lights on U.S. 29 goes far beyond the 21 signals in Albemarle: there are three in Greene, five in Madison, three in Culpeper and nine in Fauquier, according to VDOT.</p>
<p>In exchange for Western 29 Bypass and priority road projects funding, Secretary of Transportation Sean Connaughton has said the rest of the Albemarle U.S. 29 corridor will be a "test bed" for limited access, with fewer lights and curb cuts, and&#8211; you guessed it&#8211; better signal synchronization.</p>
<p>There are alternatives for reducing congestion, but they may be even more controversial than bypass building. Park notes that the 18.4 cents-a-gallon gas tax, which goes to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Trust_Fund">Highway Trust Fund</a>, hasn't been raised since 1993. Meanwhile, cars have become more efficient, which means proportionally less money going into highway infrastructure.</p>
<p>Park points to the so-called congestion fees that have been slapped on commuters from London to the Netherlands. "If you are causing additional congestion at peak hours," says Park, "you pay more."</p>
<p>Could it happen here? "Both experts and politicians are looking at that," he says.</p>
<p>On September 19, Governor Bob McDonnell announced he's gotten the <a href="http://www.governor.virginia.gov/news/viewRelease.cfm?id=923">okay for tolls on I-95</a>, so with Albemarle's portion of U.S. 29 now a test bed for corridor cleansing, who knows?</p>
<p><em>Updated September 20 with I-95 announcement and <a href="http://cvilletomorrow.typepad.com/charlottesville_tomorrow_/2011/09/bypass-estimates-rise.html?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+cvilletomorrow_rss+%28Charlottesville+Tomorrow+News+Center%29&amp;utm_content=Google+Reader">Charlottesville Tomorrow's report </a>that VDOT's unofficial cost estimates are more than double what the Commonwealth Transportation Board was told. <br /></em></p>
http://www.readthehook.com/100856/synchronization-could-man-do-what-200mm-bypass-would-do#comments_BreakingNewsFeaturedGovt/PoliticsTrafficu.s. 29western bypassCover StoriesFri, 16 Sep 2011 19:38:08 +0000lisa100856 at http://www.readthehook.comDeadly highway: 7 fatalities prompt billboard warninghttp://www.readthehook.com/69176/deadly-highway-7-fatalities-prompt-billboard-warning
<!&#8211; This will not be inserted &#8211;><!&#8211; This will not be inserted &#8211;><div class="captionLeftLandscape"><a href="http://www.readthehook.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/news-sign-seatbelt.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-25027" title="news-sign-seatbelt" src="http://www.readthehook.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/news-sign-seatbelt-325x277.jpg" alt="news-sign-seatbelt" width="325" height="277" /></a><strong>The northbound lane of U.S. 29 south tries to capture motorists' attention.</strong><br />
<small>PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE<br />
</small></div>
<p>The billboard may not win a Clio. But all Albemarle County Police really want is to stop the carnage on U.S. 29 south of Charlottesville.<br />
</p><p class="whitespace">Unlike its more heavily traveled counterpart north of town, the southern Monacan Trail end of U.S. 29 is usually a pretty easy, uncongested drive. So when the 2009 death toll between I-64 and the Nelson County line reached seven by October, Albemarle County Police looked for a way to slam the brakes on those grim statistics.<br />
</p><p class="whitespace">"It's a disturbing trend," says Lieutenant Todd Hopwood, who noted December 17 that there were no fatalities on 29 South the previous four years. Yet during the last week of October, <a href="http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/10/27/2nd-unbelted-victim-of-saturdays-crash-dies/">two accidents </a>took three lives in a couple days, and within a quarter-mile of each other. One was <a href="http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/10/27/local-good-bye-farmer-activist-kathryn-russell/">activist farmer Kathryn Russell</a>, who was struck crossing 29 at Plank Road October 22 and thrown from her truck.<br />
</p><p class="whitespace">Why the sudden spate of deaths? Police found two things in common: five of the seven were <a href="http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/10/27/2nd-unbelted-victim-of-saturdays-crash-dies/">not wearing seatbelts</a>, and five were from out of town.<br />
</p><p class="whitespace">In a multi-agency effort, Albemarle police have stepped up patrols and added rumble strips and a radar-equipped, your-speed-is sign.<br />
</p><p class="whitespace">AAA of the Mid-Atlantic sprang for the $1,500 billboard near Crossroads Store that warns of the strict enforcement. The billboard went up December 7 for the holidays and will go up again in the spring, says AAA's Windy VanCuren.<br />
</p><p class="whitespace">The buckle-up warnings have been repeated a million times before, but with seven deaths in a short stretch of road and short period of time, VanCuren hopes the message sinks in: "Most of these could have been avoided."</p>
http://www.readthehook.com/69176/deadly-highway-7-fatalities-prompt-billboard-warning#comments_BreakingNewsFeaturedAccidentsTrafficfatalityseatbeltu.s. 29Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:32:04 +0000lisa69176 at http://www.readthehook.comTruck driver gets 2 years in teen's deathhttp://www.readthehook.com/70677/truck-driver-gets-2-years-teens-death
<p><a href="http://www.readthehook.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/news-barbour.jpg"><img class="size-thumbnail wp-image-16803 alignleft" title="news-barbour" src="http://www.readthehook.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/news-barbour-140x140.jpg" alt="news-barbour" width="140" height="140" /></a>Kenneth Barbour, 55, who had already pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and reckless driving for plowing into Albemarle High student Sydney Aichs as she turned out of Forest Lakes onto U.S. 29 on her way to school May 9, 2008, <a href="http://www2.dailyprogress.com/cdp/news/local/crime/article/family_of_teen_killed_in_wreck_speaks_in_court_on_tragedys_toll/43311/#When:04:01:36Z">was sentenced </a>to 10 years in jail July 28, with eight suspended on the manslaughter charge, a $500 fine and six months suspended on the reckless driving charge. He goes back to court November 12 for a $15 million civil suit filed by the Aichs family.</p>
http://www.readthehook.com/70677/truck-driver-gets-2-years-teens-death#comments_BreakingNewsCrime/JusticeAccidentsTrafficaichsbarbourmanslaughteru.s. 29Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:36:36 +0000lisa70677 at http://www.readthehook.com